One FSE 2016 Industrial Track paper [2] describes some initial results of ongoing high-impact collaborations between Illinois ASE and Tencent Inc. on testing WeChat, a highly popular messenger app with over 762 million monthly active users.

The other FSE 2016 Industrial Track paper [3] describes some initial results of ongoing high-impact collaborations between Illinois ASE and Salesforce.com on improving testing practices at Salesforce.com.These 2 papers are among the 6 papers accepted out of 31 submissions in the FSE 2016 Industrial Track.

In the 25 years since its founding in 1991, Microsoft Research has grown to be a worldwide symbol of excellence in computer science. Our over 1,000 scientists, engineers, and designers produce technologies that change the lives of people every day through their innovative software, systems, and designs. The Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award 2016 highlight and celebrate some of the amazing academics who have worked with us over the years.

Per Tao's biography in the Outstanding Collaborator Award Booklet (see the extracted page for Tao's biography here), "Tao Xie has collaborated with Microsoft Research (MSR) over the last decade. As a visiting researcher in the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group, he personally contributed a core search algorithm for the automated test generation feature IntelliTest, which shipped as part of Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise Edition. Even more influential were his frequent visits to Microsoft Research in Redmond and China, which spawned dozens of collaborative projects. His students prototyped many new ideas on top of platforms and tools provided by MSR, in particular on the Pex4Fun project established by Nikolai Tillmann and Peli de Halleux. Over the years, Tao also deeply engaged with Dongmei Zhang and the Software Analytics group in China. This resulted in more than 60 joint high-profile publications in areas including automated test generation, computer science education, and software analytics."

Congratulations to Tao and our Illinois ASE!!! Such award is a recognition on the high impact that Illinois ASE has been making together with industrial collaborators such as Microsoft Research!!

According to the website, "Currently, this database includes US and selected Canadian and European CS or EECS departments (or equivalent); other institutions will be added in the near future." The rankings are based on counts of papers published in top venues in a specific research area. For example, the rankings consider three top conferences in software engineering: ASE, FSE, ICSE.

The website allows to produce rankings for all CS areas or for a specific CS area.

As of August 14, 2016, the Top 5 CS departments ranked in the website across all CS areas remain the same as the ones in the US News. In other words, Illinois CS is ranked No. 5. Here is the archived snapshot of the ranking shown on the website.

When considering only the software engineering area, Illinois CS is ranked No. 1. Here is the archived snapshot of the ranking shown on the website.

Although impact should be what we pursue and are proud of, it is nice to see our software engineering area at Illinois CS gets good recognition in such rankings.